By 1937, surrealism was in its second decade as a movement. Its artists and filmmakers were making inroads into London and New York galleries, and becoming media stars. The surrealist bug also bit on the West Coast, and underground gatherings like the Hollywood Film and Foto League screened European avant-garde films regularly.

Such gatherings attracted politically minded actor Harry Hay and Works Progress Administration (WPA) photographers Roger Barlow and LeRoy Robbins. After seeing a magazine ad for a short film contest, these jokers sprung into action, making Even—As You and I, a short depicting themselves as broke filmmakers who cobble together clichés from their fave avant-garde films into a dorky film-within-a-film spoof called The Afternoon of a Rubber Band. In a “D’oh!”-style ending, the three realize they’ve missed the contest’s midnight deadline.

A damn clever little underground film moment. Hay—the curly-haired guy in the group—would go on to become the godfather of gay activism, founding the Mattachine Society in the early’50s and the Radical Faeries in the early ‘70s.
 

 
Check out part 2 after the jump!

 

 
All You Need Is Love from zed1.
 
(via Wooster Collective)

 
Marc’s post about Times Square yesterday reminded me about Los Angeles’ equivalent: The once thriving downtown suburb of Bunker Hill. In the very spot where now sits the Disney concert hall and the 1960’s music center complex was once a thriving neighborhood packed with turn-of-the-century Victorian houses, theaters, bars, restaurants and a large population of retired old folks. By the mid 1950’s when Kent Mackenzie, future director of the acclaimed film The Exiles (which also takes place in Bunker Hill), made this short documentary film the neighborhood was already doomed. By the end of the 60’s, save for a few buildings it was all gone. In a city such as ours which perpetually tears down the past and re-invents itself there was no way a few rickety old buildings and poor people would ever get in the way of progress. Fortunately we have the below film and countless other movies and books to remind us of what once was.
 
oops, the video was taken down. To view the short film, buy or rent The Exiles DVD. Sorry !

 
On Bunker Hill (great resource for Bunker Hill in films and literature)

 
Documentary with performances by The Dead, Mothers Of Invention, Big Brother, The Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and lots of hippies dancing and getting stoned. It was directed by Stefan Morawietz for German TV. It’s in German, but you’ll get the idea.

 
part two after the jump

 

 
Goats in Trees
 
It’s goats in trees! Goats in trees! Goats in trees! Goats in trees!
 
(via Daily What)

 
Who Killed Nancy opens today In New York City. The film makes a strong case that Sid Vicious did not kill Nancy Spungen. Read about it at the Daily Mail.

Melvin Bliss, singer of one the most sampled songs of all time, 1973’s “Synthetic Substitution,” has died. The list of artists who’ve borrowed from the track is long and overwhelming: Ultramagnetic MC’s, Public Enemy, De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Gang Starr, Wu-Tang Clan; it goes on, pretty much forever.

Zach Baron of the Village Voice has put together a sweet video tribute to Melvin. Check it out at Village Voice

 
You read right. Jim Chuchu is one-third of the excellent Kenyan beat-pop group Just A Band, and this April he released what became Kenya’s first viral video, for their song “Ha-He.” It features the Shaft-esque character Makmende, named after playground slang for a tough guy, which itself is derived from Clint Eastwood’s “make my day” line as Dirty Harry from Sudden Impact.
 

 
But Chuchu is hardly a one-trick-pony. He’s brought his simple, wry, off-beat style to a bunch of ingenious videos by Just A Band (including the astonishing “Usinibore”) and loads of other Nairobi acts. Plus he’s built his own lighting components, which is DIY as hell.

Check out a few of the videos after the jump and you’ll understand why Chuchu has become the master visual chronicler of the sound of digital East Africa.
 

 
The magnificent R. L. Burnside in his first film appearance, performing See My Jumper Hanging On The Line. Filmed by Alan Lomax at Burnside’s home in Independence, Mississippi, August, 1978.

 
New “eye candy” from Dangerous Minds fave Jason Mecier showing in San Francisco, with work from his partner, Adam J. Ansell, in an exhibit called We Like to Watch TV, opening August 1 and running through September 30.

I just love this portrait of “Dexter” done in licorice!

Celebrity mosaic portrait artist Jason Mecier and longtime partner, painter Adam J. Ansell, have teamed up to create a new body of work inspired by their favorite pastime… watching TV! Expect to see many faces from TV, movies, reality shows, sitcoms, documentaries, music videos and even commercials.

Adam’s edgy, high fashion, expressionistic paintings, ironically capture eccentric television personalities from The Real Housewives, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover, True Blood, and The Wendy Williams Show, to Millionaire Matchmaker, Larry King and many others.

Jason’s new works are striking and delicious, made entirely out of licorice! Thousands of fat free red and black licorice vines have been carefully glued into the likenesses of Mo’Nique, Judge Judy, Dexter, Freddy Krueger, Nomi Malone, Taylor Lautner, and others.

GLAMA - RAMA, 304 Valencia Street, San Francisco 415.861.4526
Opening Reception Sunday August 1, 6-9pm

 
These photographs taken for the US Farm Security Administration in the late 30s/early 40s are among the only color photographs taken during the Great Depression. They document the impact of the depression on small town and rural America. Each tells a story, each one a work of art.
 

 
See more of these stunning photos after the jump…

 
Enjoyable interview with the literary executor for the William S. Burroughs estate, James Grauerholz, who worked closely with the author for 23 years, conducted by Stephen Foland. It’s a discussion specifically about Burrough’s interest in magick—something that interests me greatly to read about, I can assure you—but what’s fun about the interview is reading between the lines as Grauerholz gently manages to provide a more, how shall I put it, secular viewpoint on the matter.

SF: William’s magickal experimentation, the aspects of recording what he called “Danger Sounds” and replaying them in proximity to his target, or using collage to hit a specific target has become the stuff of legend. Some attribute the closing of one particular establishment to William’s hexes. Is there another specific instance which you can recall that is as dramatic and apparently self-evident?

JG: Nope, not really. You are likely referring to the Moka Bar in London, where William said he received snide, snotty service and lousy, weak tea — and his tape-recorders-and-cameras mock-surveillance routine, back and forth on the sidewalk of Frith Street, and how the Moka Bar failed and was shuttered not too long after that.

Forgive me please, but my cast of mind leads me to suspect the Moka Bar, if it really did sell lousy tea with terrible service, might have been headed out of business, with or without the sound-text-tape-film sidewalk-pacing routine…

Below, Burroughs reads from Nova Express on Saturday Night Live in 1981. I remember seeing this the night it aired live and being totally flabbergasted to actually see William Burroughs on television. Something like that seemed impossible at the time!
 

 
Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick (Pop Damage)

 
Australian artist Scott Marr beautifully repurposed these fragile old shellac 78rpm discs with a small electric drill and a tiny bit of paint. By the way, did you know that shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand?
 


 
Thanks Shannon Fields !

 
Because putting together the Phew/Aunt Sally post made me think of them and because I need a unicorn chaser after that cheesy thing I posted just now (ironically from the same time period as this), Here’s The Fall, live in Leeds, doing one of the best odes to speed that I know of, aside from this one or (duh!) this one. I drunk a jar of coffee and then I took some of these !

 
Alternate version after the jump…

 
Something deeply silly from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which ran on U.S. TV from 1979-1981. Evidently the disco music of 400 years from now will be a sort of fusion of The Residents and Weather Report. I never would have guessed !

 
Thanks Ned Raggett !